From Abandoned Gas Station Brownfield to Arts + Resilience Community Hub: Seattle’s Mini Mart City Park

Catherine De Almeida, associate professor of landscape architecture at the University of Washington, developed a case study of Mini Mart City Park, a community-focused cultural center, park and brownfield remediation designed by GO’C Studio and the artist collaborative SuttonBeresCuller in the Duamish Valley, Washington.

Mini Mart City Park (MMCP) represents a radical reimagining of brownfield redevelopment. It is a project that challenges conventional, profit-driven models by centering environmental repair, cultural regeneration, and genuine community agency. Located in Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood—a landscape shaped by industrial intensity, systemic pollution, and creative resilience—MMCP transformed a contaminated former gas station into a flexible, community-led arts and cultural hub. Unlike typical brownfield redevelopments, which often prioritize expedited cleanup and rapid commercial reuse, MMCP unfolded over nearly two decades, embracing a slow, community-centered process that foregrounded collective making, long-term stewardship, and adaptive use. Guided by the ethos of “cleaning the earth with art,” the project refused extractive remediation approaches and instead integrated visible, on-site environmental healing through air sparging systems, bioretention infrastructure, and green roofs.

The significance of MMCP lies not only in its physical transformation, but also in the processes of engagement that shaped its evolution. This case study foregrounds how MMCP decentralized the role of the designer and distributed agency across a web of partners: artists, architects, environmental consultants, youth workers, community and nonprofit organizations, and neighborhood residents. Groups like Dirt Corps and the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps were given nearly full autonomy, not token involvement, to design, build, and plant large portions of the site, fostering profound community ownership and learning.

Yet, these participatory ambitions came with persistent challenges. Extended permitting timelines, environmental uncertainties, and funding volatility constantly threatened the project’s future, while balancing technical remediation with evolving community priorities demanded ongoing flexibility, persistence, and trust. The design team and Dirt Corps, for example, adjusted their architectural and landscape plans as they navigated regulatory hurdles and incorporated new community programming needs. The original project architects, GO’C, remain engaged in current and future phases, most notably the transformation of the site into an official resilience hub through a large solar panel installation integrated into the building. Underpinning it all was a central challenge: how does one create a new community space without triggering the displacement and gentrification patterns that often follow arts and parks-led redevelopment? The question reveals a deeper tension between activation and engagement—a central theme to this case study.

Processes of adaptation, negotiation, and recommitment ultimately shaped MMCP’s identity. Through persistent community engagement, equitable access policies, and deeply rooted partnerships with local organizations, it has remained a site of place-keeping rather than place-taking. SuttonBeresCuller (SBC), the artist group responsible for the vision, implementation, and programming of MMCP, and MMCP Executive Director Emily Kelly note that the model could be adapted in other contexts. MMCP offers a transferable model defined not necessarily by its arts programming but by its core philosophies—centering community agency, visible and celebratory remediation, cultural and environmental resilience, and embracing uncertainty as an inherent part of complex, community-driven work. An arts center is not the only possible future for abandoned gas stations: they can also become a food bank, library, resilience hub, and/or other vital community or mutual aid anchor. MMCP ultimately challenges practitioners, policymakers, and communities to reconsider what is possible when abandoned, contaminated spaces are reclaimed not through extraction, but through engaged creativity, collaboration, and care.